The Spectator
At 8.30 am on Sunday, a motley group of people is waiting below a building on Gamadia road, an offshoot of Warden Road.
Made up mostly of foreigners, the type you see in Goa or at ashrams around India, its members exchange pleasantries even as there appears to be a heightened sense of tension as if they are waiting eagerly for something to happen, some signal to be given.
Then at 8.45, that unspoken signal is given and the group — forgetting all its recent pleasantries — races across the road, and tears up the four floors of a well-appointed Mumbai building, as if it were running 100 ft race.
These are the early birds among the faithful devotees, and they are here as most of them have been for the past few months, to sit in satsang at the feet of their Master, the eighty nine year old Ramesh Balsekar, who for the next two hours will take them through one of the most extraordinary profound experiences with the power of his words.
As gurus go Balsekar is not stereotypical. An ex-banker of considerable success, a keen golfer, a one time body builder, a sophisticate, a householder, a family man and an alumni of the London School of Economics, he seems uninterested in the trappings that have come to be associated with gurudom — (Rolls Royces, private jets, ashrams, controversies), and seems content to sit in the comfortable verandah of the apartment in the building he owns, each morning, day after day, conversing amiably with his flock of devotees on some of the most tantalising existential dilemmas that have faced mankind.
This Sunday amidst the reassuringly every day sounds of a Mumbai household’s morning rituals — the hiss of a pressure cooker, the chime of a clock-one of the world’s greatest exponents of the philosophy of Advaita is gently — but firmly — taking a devotee by the name of Basanti through the rigors of what he calls his concepts.
The crux of Advaita teaching is that there is no doer; every thing that occurs does so by the will of God and the individual destiny of that being. It is a comforting concept resulting in a cessation of guilt, regret and anger and has brought to Balsekar’s feet hundreds of devotees from all around the world, including Hollywood star Dennis Quaid, and the soulful singer Leonard Cohen.
After the talk, a few devotees walk across to a nearby tea shop where, under a tin roof and over chai, they discuss the morning’s lecture in all its profound implications.
Just another day in paradise in Mumbai.
s_malavika@dnaindia.net
